Metaphysical Speculation Into The Nature of This Comic, or: Lovelace and Babbage vs The Salamander People

In case any neurologists out there are studying the creative process, I thought it might be interesting to post the following enlightening non-episode.

As I mentioned earlier my Accomplice and I went to this steampunk shindig the other day. The theme for this shindig was “Journey To the Center of the Earth”, so of course I had to point out to Mr V, “Did you know that Charles Babbage once went into Mount Vesuvius, where he set his walking stick on fire, and almost lost his barometer?” (True! and an AWESOME story –Babbage get out of the Volcano!! Babbage? Babbage??!).

Of course then I do a doodle:

This is just the sort of contextless tableau I like to draw, so I worked it up when I got home:

Then I think of the caption– “Charles Babbage once went into Mount Vesuvius, where he battled the salamander people offered some guy a drink.”

But surely the amiable Charles Babbage, that most affable of men, wouldn’t battle the Salamander People, unless they were playing street music or refusing to fund the Difference Engine? For although fearless in defense of their subterranean flame-caverns, they have never been know to instigate hostilities against the human race (fact!). What he WOULD do of course is offer them a drink, which would make a great (if ancient) gag:

Which would fit really well into an actual plot-line… quick glance at wikipedia turns up a plethora of potential — salamanders are the only vertebrates that can re-grow limbs! they lay their eggs in hidden caches suspended by mucus tendrils! Many are poisonous or capture prey with sticky tongues! They can see ultraviolet light! Also… volcanoes.. sacrifices.. barometer.. Hattifatteners… and this where I’ve stopped myself because I already have enough episodes at this stage of “wouldn’t it be cool if…” Diagram:

And anyways, are there even salamander-people in this universe?! That’s not very Educational!! There’s vampires possibly at some point.. if a universe contains vampires does it follow it also contains salamander-people? Are there any statistics on this? Should I take a poll? That’s all ‘social media’ or something.

Final note: in doing the original drawing I had to ask myself if Babbage would be wearing a hat. For most of western history a man would sooner go outside without his trousers as without a hat, so this is pretty important. This raises the question: is an underground cavern ‘inside’ or ‘outside’? You wouldn’t think this would be an easy question to answer except that if you go to the Brunel museum, conveniently located where he built the world’s first underwater tunnel, you see this:

See, opinion is clearly divided even then. (Note to the 19th century– That’s TOTALLY ‘inside’, because it’s a man-made structure. That’s just plain logic.) Anyways it messes up my composition, plus Babbage goes really off-model with the hat. Possible solution: sequence where hat catches fire? Not sure why I put in this digression except I love those guys in the tunnel with their hats.

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Also, Karel ?apek and The War with the Newts. Made into at least two comics in the Czech language, too… The slightly disturbingly colonial way Babbage approaches this Salamander rather reminds me of that.

I was thinking that he would initially have a hat with a candle or something like old-school miners. That got me thinking of the Davy lamp. Did you know that Humphry Davy was addicted to laughing gas at the “Pneumatic Institution” in Bristol. A junkie hanging out with Poets! I’m thinking an adversary for Ada here! He did visit Vesuvius, but died in 1829. At one point he ignited a diamond using the suns rays! Sounds like a super villain to me. I do not know his views regarding street music though ;)

I can just imagine Babbage going in there with some fancy hat with a miners
light attached. Which could lead to a part where the hat explodes or something.
(Comedy+Hats = Scenarios (unknown number of) let number of scenarios be S.
S1 hat catches fire
S2 hat explodes
S3 hat falls into ravine & Babbage risks life to retreive it
S4 Salamander person eats hat
S5 Salamander person steals hat
S6 hat is carried away on underground river
S7 hat blows off and is crushed by falling rock.)
The possabilitys are endless!

“The cavern has stalactites. Stalactites would not be conducive to hat-wearing,”

We’re talking caving here (called potholing by the Brits, these days), and I have been a caver for a long time. Entering a cave mandates almost wearing a hat, preferably a hard hat, something Isambard Kingdom Brunel could have been familiar with. Just watch the James Mason version of “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” and you’ll see why. Stalactites can be annoyingly stabby without a hard hat.

Salamanders are always good, of course. They don’t bother with hats and tend to have interesting spots. Hattifatteners are also good, but must be borrowed from someone else’s alternate world; barometers are a natural connection with Babbage, yes. Your tophat, your drawings and everyone’s comments have me noticing hats, thinking about hats, and following links to hats on the internet even more than usual. If I win the lottery, I am so going to indulge in more hats and boots. And Lovelace merch.

“More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

See what I mean?

Eddie Izzard may claim that the British build their empire with the cunning use of flags, I say they did so with the cunning use of Hats!

A hat to a 19th century is as the towel to the dude who hitchhikes the galaxy. As long as you wear a hat/carry a towel, people will think of you as a Person Of Substance, with a Purpose. Without the hat, you are just a man. With the hat, you are a Person. With a tophat, you are a Gentleman.
That’s the difference.

Hats are good for more than the sun. They protect one from falling debris, and esp. when doing construction are very useful. Keeping falling bits of rock and dust and sand out of one’s hair when you don’t go home and wash it every day is an important thing. Hats also protect the eyes from much of the same stuff and the brim acts as a safeguard for stuff falling in your collar, a-la the oblong brims on a firemans hat. Hats are very practical underground!

I’d say be practical about the hat. The cavern has stalactites. Stalactites would not be conducive to hat-wearing, especially if he was wearing a stovepipe hat like he did in the Economic Model. Also, looking at the construction scene, with the exception of one hat-wearer, the hat faction is doing upright things while the hatless faction is bending over in their work – and the one hatted bender is actually squatting (or my eyes are bad, or both).

Vampires and salamander people. If you can provide a good base for having both, explicit or implicit, then there are both. I’d plump for having both based on the idea that these are both fictional constructs and the story is fictional so they already inhabit the same world.

EvilHayama– Hahaha, Lovelace and Babbage fanfiction! That would be awesome– fanfiction without the inconvenient fiction! Oddly enough I was just reading this thing on Wired about audience-created meta-narratives or whatever. Hey, we can be postmodern around here.

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About the Author

Sydney Padua is an animator, story artist, and tiresome bore who can generally be found making giant monsters appear to attack people for the movies. She started drawing comics by accident and is still trying to figure out how to stop.